1) Fold one of the construction paper crosswise. Cut it in half and fold it again in half. This will serve as your cover. You can decorate the front of the cover as you wish.2) Fold the other construction paper lengthwise. Cut it in half. Glue the 2 sheets together to make a long strip of paper.3) Fold the long strip evenly like an accordion.4) Glue one side the folded paper to the inside of the card cover. Make sure the top of the accordion fold is on the inside next to the fold of the cover. Decorate your accordion strip as you wish.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Here's my latest craze--water color painting! For the past three months, I've been self-studying water color painting. Its really difficult to master doing those washes but I'm practicing (hehe). Here are some of my painting outputs. Its not titled yet coz these are only experimental works.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Vincent van Gogh is one of the most talented modern artists. Though he suffered from depression and insanity during his life, his art works are marvelous. The most famous among his works is The Starry Night painting. It tells so much of his life's despair and the hope that's left in him. Here are some of my sixth graders The Starry Night Painting!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Henri Rousseau was a french post-impressionist painter in the naive and primitive manner. His best known paintings depict jungle scenes, even though he never really left France or saw a jungle. His inpirations came from illustrated books and the botanical gardens in Paris. He claimed to have invented a new genre of portrait landscape, which he achieved by starting a painting with a view such as a favorite part of the city, and then depicting a person in the foreground.

Some of Henri Rousseau's paintings are:The Snake Charmer (1907)

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope (1905)

The Sleeping Gypsy

I presented a short background information for my students before I made them draw. Since Henri Rousseau's works ussually showed the jungle, I had the students think of different wild animals. Then, I allowed them to draw from their imagination a jungle. I asked them to draw at least one wild animal as a foreground for their drawings.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

One exciting activity me and my students did in my third grade art class is making free form shapes from geometric shapes. I found this very exciting activity in Ms. Kathy Barbro's blog: http://artprojectsforkids.org.

Procedure:1) Using a pencil, draw different kinds of geometric shapes- circle, triangle, square, rectangle, etc. You can overlap the shapes.2) After the pencil shapes are drawn, they are to be colored in with a NON-permanent, waterbase marker. This is the time to use those cheap, fat store markers as you actually will be wanting the colors to bleed.3) Drop several puddles of water on your artwork with a brush or dropper. If they pick up the paper and roll the water around a bit, it should start to make lots of colored streaks and blobs. Repeat this until almost all of the artwork is filled with wiggly colored lines. Let dry.4) Once it is completely dry, trace all the organic shapes that were made from the running water. You need to work slowly to trace all the wonderful edges you see, both inside and outside the colored shapes. The more time you put into the tracing, and the more detail you see, the better your artwork will look.

This is an interesting activity to let kids practice drawing contour lines.

Materials:1) bond paper2) colored markers3) crayons

Procedure:1) Look at pictures of different kinds of leaves.2) Draw leaves of different shapes. Fill the paper with at least 3 leaves facing different directions.3) Color the leaves with different colors. It doesn't have to be all green.4) Lastly, trace the leaves around with colored markers, following the edges of the original and expanding as they proceed. As the shapes grow, they will eventually bump into the other leaf shapes and you will have to decide which ones are in front and which are in back.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Here is a simple way of drawing a horse. I found this lesson on www.howstuffworks.com and thought that it would be a wonderful lesson for my art students.

Step 1: Draw a kidney-bean shape for the body and a peanut shape for the head. Add a rectangular form between them for the neck.

Step 2: Draw the two front legs. Sketch the closest back leg in two pieces, one pear shape and one rectangular shape. Add a rectangular shape for the back leg on the far side of the horse. Put in ovals for the ears.

Step 3: Draw two long S shapes for the tail and mane. Add the small mane on top of the head. Next, we'll add some personality and detail.

Step 4: Draw ovals for the eyes, nostrils, and ear details. Put pupils in the eyes. Add hooves at the bottom of each leg. Finish this step with lines for the mouth, tail, and mane details.

Step 5: Draw ovals for the eyes, nostrils, and ear details. Put pupils in the eyes. Add hooves at the bottom of each leg. Finish this step with lines for the mouth, tail, and mane details.

Now, you can color the horse. Put it in varied settings. You can put in on a ranch, on the race track, on the farm, on a carriage, or with a cowboy riding it!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Procedure:1) Place the leaf under the bond paper.2) Using crayon (any color),rub in a back and forth manner on the white paper over the leaf.3) Experiment with different types of leaves & crayons. Doing multiple leaves on one piece of paper looks really neat!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Here comes the sun! Use fun lines and designs to create a sun that shines with bold and bright colors.

Materials:1) Crayons2) Circular pattern

Procedure:1) Draw a large circle sun at the center of the paper2) Draw a dot at the center of the circle.3) Surround the dot with zigzag lines then, surround the zigzag lines with dots.4) Draw the zigzag lines and the dots alternately. Do this until the whole circle is filled.5) Draw zigzag lines radiating outside the circle.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I saw this idea from one of the art blogs I browsed in the the net (I'm sorry I can't site my reference since I don't remember the site anymore). I thought that it would be a wonderful activity for my lesson on lines.

Materials:1) black or colored markers2) crayons or color pencils

Procedure:1) Chose different letters of the alphabet to draw in your paper. You can draw all capital or all small letters. You can also mix the capital and small letters. You can also include numbers.2) Draw one big letter/ number of your choice on your paper(you can start by using a pencil and trace the lines with a marker later on but if you think that you can make it neatly, you can directly use the marker.).3) Connect another letter/ number to the letter/ number that you've drawn.4) Repeat step 3 until you've filled the whole paper.5) Color the spaces between the lines with different colors.

Note:*Draw the letters/ numbers big so that it wont take you long to finish the activity.*Make sure to connect the edges of each letter to another letter. There shouldn't be any open end of a line in your work.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

With the increasing problem on global warming and climate change, our school is geared towards environmental awareness. This school year (and hopefully in the upcoming years as well), we have decided to integrate the theme on caring for the planet in our curriculum. We want our students to take to heart the love for mother Earth. To start off the school year with that goal in mind, I asked my 4th, 5th and 6th graders to make this very simple mosaic.

Procedure:1) Fold the short bond paper in half (crosswise).2) Cut a half heart's shape from the bond paper.3) Open it and paint the whole heart blue. Then, let it dry.4) While waiting for the heart to dry, cut small squares of green paper.5) Once the heart is totally dry, lightly sketch land masses forming some of the world's continents.6) Glue the green paper to the land masses to cover it.7) On another small sheet of bondpaper, write a phrase about taking care of the environment (e.g. One Earth, We Care or We Love Mother Earth). Use your markers to make the phrase colorful!8) Glue the phrase to the heart shaped Earth.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Children are very imaginative and creative. They can make different things from their imagination. I asked my grade one class to imagine the house that they would like to live in and draw it on a sheet of paper. Here are the results:Liam Angelo Camasura of grade 1-BChantelle Aguilar of grade 1-BAngela Oracion of grade 1-AYuuki Yamaguchi of grade 1-BJames Ivan Monteroyo of grade 1-CPeter Kim of grade 1-CSample works:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Procedure:1) Lightly draw the design you want on a sheet of paper. (Do this with straight regular lines first.)2) Once you've finalized your design, color it with markers. trace your drawing with wiggly lines. There is no need to be neat.

Vincent Van Gogh was a dutch post impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. One of his famous paintings is "Sunflowers".

I tried to let my students imitate this vibrant art work as a tribute to the artist's great work!

Materials Needed:1) oil pastel2) paper

Procedure:1) Draw a line for the table. outline a jar above it.2) Draw a series of circles for flowers. The circles size could vary from small, large and medium. Draw small petals around the flowers.3) Draw stems and add leaves.4) Trace the pencil drawing with a marker.5) Color your work heavily with oil pastel.

Here are some works made by the students:Sample WorkSunflowers by Natsumi Cortes of grade 2-B